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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



How Missions Pay 



A Study 

In the Triumphs of 

Christianity 



J> y By 

J?W. L/AUGHIJN, D.D. 

Late Superintendent of Missions of the 

Cumberland Presbyterian 

Church' 



Nashville, Tennessee 

THE CUMBERLAND PRESS 

1902 



THt. L.SRA 


RY OF 


CONGRESS, 


Two Copies 


Received 


JAN 12 


1903 


Copyrignt 


Entry 


iS*- S3 


XXc. No 


//■ ^- b 


u. -r 


COPY 


B. ■ 






CONTENTS 

Testimony 5 

Introduction 7 

I. Individual Character 9 

II. Nations in a Day 15 

III. The Schoolmaster Abroad 18 

IV. Scientists and Pioneers 23 

V. Dollars and Cents 30 

VI. The Future That Shall Be .... 35 



TESTIMONY. 



I cannot forbear to pay my passing tribute, 
nay my homage, to missionaries. I have no 
words to express my admiration of these men. 
I count it one of the privileges of my life to have 
seen their work. Henry Drummond. 

To discountenance a religion which has done 
so much to promote justice, mercy, freedom, the 
arts of science, good government and domestic 
happiness ; which has struck off the chains of 
the slave, mitigated the horrors of war, raised 
women from servants and playthings into com- 
panions and friends, is to commit high treason 
against humanity and civilization. 

Lord Macaulay. 

Missionaries deserve a vote of thanks from the 
commercial world. Robert Moffat. 

As for the spread of education and the con- 
sequent raising of the standard of civilization the 
value of missionary effort has been simply im- 
measurable. Dr. Clark. 

It is of doubtful expediency, yea a demon- 
strated disadvantage, to press civilization upon 
barbarous and savage communities, since their 
incapacity to assume it makes it a demoralizing 
force and an overwhelming burden. 

Prof. Flinders Petrie. 
5 



6 HO W MISSIONS PA Y 

In my judgment the Christian missionaries 
have done more real and lasting good to the 
people of India than all other agencies combined. 
They have been the salt of the country and the 
true saviors of the empire. 

Sir Augustus Rivers Thompson, 
Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. 

Speaking simply as to matter of experience 
qnd observation, I assure you that whatever you 
may be told to the contrary, the teachings of 
Christianity among the hundred and sixty mil- 
lions of civilized, industrious Hindus and Mo- 
hammedans in India are effecting changes moral, 
social and political which for extent and rapidity 
of effect are far more extraordinary than any- 
thing you or your fathers have witnessed in mod- 
ern Europe. Sir Bartle Frere, 
Governor of Bombay. 

Missionaries are the pioneers of trade and com- 
merce. Civilization, learning, instruction breed 
new wants which commerce supplies. The mis- 
sionary inspired by holy zeal p-oes everywhere 
and by degrees foreign commerce and trade fol- 
low. Mr. Denby, 
United States Minister to China. 



INTRODUCTION. 



o 



NE hot and dusty summer day, 
as the train on the Mexican Cen- 
tral wound its way among the 
mountain spurs and over the 
sandy plains of northern Mexico, I fell 
into a conversation with a fellow traveler, 
who quickly asked my business, and as 
quickly replied, when I told him, that he 
did not think it was very profitable. I was 
a missionary and he was a merchant. He 
had seen but one side of missionary life, 
and without investigation had concluded 
that missions do not pay. 1 gave him a 
few facts which I had gleaned from vari- 
ous sources and was glad to hear him say 
that he had not before seen it in that light. 
He was a twentieth century man. He 
was wide awake, keen, and accustomed to 
Does it ask the value of everything he 
Pay? touched. He asked me what 
return had been made to the world for all 
the money and men used in preaching 
the gospel, in building churches and in 
7 



8 HOW MISSIONS PA Y 

establishing schools and hospitals In for- 
eign fields. It was not a new question. 
From Job's time down men have asked : 

"What is the Almighty, that we should serve 
him? And what profit should we have, if we 
pray unto him?" 

Our age is peculiarly sensitive, however, 
to the question of profit and loss, and rT 
it can be shown that as a result of mis- 
sion work the sum total of the world's 
knowledge has been increased, natural 
science illumined, philology and geog- 
raphy advanced, commerce and civiliza- 
tion stimulated, we have gone a long way 
toward answering the question which the 
spirit of the times is continually suggest- 
ing: Do missions really pay? 



I. 

INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER. 



"Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and 
of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a 
perfect man." 



HE noblest thing in the world is 
Christian character. It is not a 
product of race, but of grace. It 
is not a result of good blood, but 
of divine blood. Mission work is product- 
ive of magnificent character wherever 
tried. Ever since the wild man of Gadara 
was clothed and put in his right mind by 
coming in contact with Jesus, men every- 
where have been transformed by the same 
power until the world has been con- 
strained to say, "Behold what God hath 
wrought." This is a realm where mathe- 
matics play no part. No earthly stand- 
ards can measure results in this sphere. 
The forces that exalt man's nature are 
divine. 

9 



10 HO W MISSIONS PA Y 

A half century ago a boy was born in 
the Japanese empire. By some fortunate 
providence a copy of a Chinese transla- 
tion of the Bible fell into his hands. Soon 
a glimpse at a map of the United States 
gave him a desire to see the new world, 
but Japanese law forbade emigration and 

Japanese he was compelled to run away. 
Push. j^ e s tole on board a ship at 
Shanghai and worked his way to Boston, 
where he came under the influence of Mr. 
Joseph Hardy, a Christian philanthropist, 
who offered to educate him. He entered 
college and became a Christian. He took 
Mr. Hardy's name. He finished his col- 
lege course with honor and went back to 
Japan to become the first native evan- 
gelist of his race. He collected money 
with which to erect the Doshisha, the first 
great Christian school of the empire. He 
used to say that he could have been nailed 
to a literal cross with less suffering than 
he was compelled to endure while at work 
upon that school. But by no tempting 
offer of personal gain could he be induced 
to turn aside from his course as a mis- 
sionary, and when he died there were 
hundreds of young men and women all 



INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER 11 

over the empire who testified to the in- 
fluence which the life of Joseph Hardy 
Neesima had upon them for good. 

In China a native preacher has this 
story to tell of his life for Christ: Soon 
after his conversion he got a box for a 
pulpit and began to preach. A mob 
Chinese gathered, knocked him off the 
Courage. ^ox, b eat him w ith bamboo 
rods and threw him over the walls of the 
city for dead. He revived, went to a 
brook and washed off the dirt and blood, 
then went back and began again to preach. 
The mob again gathered, again beat him 
with rods, dragged him through the 
streets and threw him again over the 
walls for dead. He came to again and 
knelt down and prayed, "Lord, what wilt 
thou have me to do?" Then he went 
back and began again to preach. The 
mob gathered the third time. The police, 
fearing that they would have to answer 
for the preacher's life, arrested him and 
put him into a prison that opened upon a 
square. Here the mob gathered and 
yelled and threw stones and tore their 
hair and cried for his life. The preacher 
went to the window, put his hand out and 



12 HO W MISSIONS PA Y 

beckoned to them to be quiet ; then, lean- 
ing his bruised and bleeding face against 
the prison bars, said: "None of these 
things move me, neither count I my life 
dear to myself, so that I might finish my 
course with joy, and the ministry, which I 
have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify 
the gospel of the grace of God." Did any 
of the old martyrs do any better than that ? 
Did ever Anglo-Saxon blood show ma- 
terial for sturdier character than that? 

In a little rude hut on the banks of the 
Bangweolo, in the heart of Africa, David 
Livingstone gave his heroic life back to 
African God. At the time of his death 

Devotion. ^ e was attended by six black 
sons of the soil, whom his devotion had 
won for Christ. They found him in the 
morning dead. "They were six thousand 
miles from his native land, and fifteen hun- 
dred from the coast. The circumstances 
which surrounded them were enough to 
embarrass the most expert. The body 
must be preserved, but there were no 
means of embalming it. It must be trans- 
ported to the coast, but there were no 
carts or wagons', no roads or beasts of 
burden. What should be done? It re- 



INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER 13 

quired but a moment to decide. In a 
crude, primitive fashion they prepared the 
body for transportation by removing the 
heart and viscera and burying them under 
a tree ; then it was exposed to the sun for 
a number of days, and, when reduced to 
the condition of a mummy, sewed into 
a covering of canvas and so made ready 
to be borne between two men on their 
shoulders. Then these black men of the 
forest, who had known Livingstone's God, 
looked to him for direction and started 
upon the most remarkable funeral march 
on record. Watch them as for forty 
weeks they run all manner of risks, now 
going by some circuitous route to secure 
a safe passage, now compelled to resort 
to stratagem to get their precious burden 
through the country, now forced to fight 
their foes in order to complete their holy 
mission. Follow them as they ford rivers, 
traverse trackless deserts and dare perils 
from wild beasts and wilder men. On 
and on, never fainting, never halting, they 
go, until they lay at the feet of the British 
consul at Zanzibar, in love and gratitude, 
all there was left of Scotland's noblest 
hero, except that buried heart." Has the 



14 HO W MISSIONS PA Y 

world ever seen an exhibition of courage, 
tenderness, gratitude or devotion which 
surpassed that? When such results as 
these are found on mission fields, may we 
not ask whether we are not justified in 
doing missionary work at any cost? 



II. 

NATIONS IN A DAY. 




'Righteousness exalteth a nation : 
But sin is a reproach to any people." 

TRANSFORMATIONS no less 
radical than those mentioned on 
preceding pages have been seen 
in entire communities. There is 
a large and beautiful group of islands in 
the southern Pacific Ocean', called the Fiji 
Islands. These number about two hun- 
dred. Only eight of them are inhabited, 
and the largest two are only about ninety 
miles in length. The inhabitants are a 
fine race, of fair intelligence, and, accord- 
ing to the measure of their simple wants, 
reasonably industrious. Having been left 
to the undisturbed control of bad influ- 
ences, they became extremely vile and 
degraded. Cannibalism was a recognized 
institution among them and was practiced 
to a frightful extent. Infanticide was a 
15 



16 HO W MISSIONS PA Y 

general custom and the burial alive of the 
sick was common. Polygamy with all its 
inseparable evils was established through- 
out the group. 

About fifty years ago James Calvert 
and John Hunt, two men from the Wes- 
leyan church, began work among these 

Christian islands. The language of the 
Fi J'* people having never been 

written, the missionaries had to supply an 
alphabet and reduce the language to writ- 
ing, so as to give the people a knowledge 
of the word of God in their own tongue. 
In the face of this stupendous difficulty 
the work was begun. In faith and hope 
the seed was sown, and the result is a 
permanent transformation of the people. 
They have schools with forty thousand 
children in attendance. They have thirty 
thousand Christians, with an average at- 
tendance of one hundred thousand people 
at public worship. Fifty years ago there 
was not a Christian in Fiji, now not an 
avowed heathen can be found. Canni- 
balism is no more, and other customs of 
barbarism and cruelty have disappeared. 
Similar transformations have been 
wrought in Sierra Leone and Equatorial 






NATIONS IN A DAY 17 

Africa, in New Zealand and Uganda, in 
Japan and Siam, in the New Hebrides, 
Tahiti, Hawaii and Madagascar. China 
and India have not been converted, but 
movement in that direction is so striking 
in its character as to insure the final re- 
sult. 



III. 

THE SCHOOLMASTER) ABROAD. 



"My people are destroyed for lack of knowl- 
edge." 




I 



T is a delight to consider the edu- 
cative force of mission work. It 
has never been the policy of 
heathen governments to educate 
the masses ; hence, in lands where mis- 
sionaries labor, schools are seldom found. 
Sometimes the spirit of trade leads men 
to start and maintain for a time institu- 
tions for qualifying themselves and their 
sons for business. But such schools are 
short-lived, and as soon as the present 
need disappears they collapse. The truest 
a college and therefore the most abid- 
in Syria. } n g interest in education is 
that which, appreciating the value of the 
gospel and desiring to perpetuate its ben- 
efits, builds a college to raise up men who 
can grasp the truths of the Bible and set 
18 



SCHOOLMASTER ABROAD 19 

them forth before the world with power. 
With this thought in mind the mission- 
aries of Syria decided to erect the Syrian 
Protestant College of Beirut. It has a 
literary department, with dormitories, 
cabinets, lecture rooms, library and 
chapel. It has a medical hall, containing 
medical libraries, lecture rooms, dissect- 
ing rooms, chemical and pharmaceutical 
laboratories. It is conducted strictly on 
evangelical principles and is open to all 
who comply with its regulations. Every 
student is made acquainted with the dis- 
tinctive principles of the gospel and the 
Bible is one of the text-books through the 
week in all the classes. 

The preparatory department was started 
in 1865, the college proper in 1866. The 
first class graduated in 1871. At the time 
the college was established no woman 
could be heard of who could read. None 
was considered capable of learning. "Of 
what use could it be?" they said. "Could 
she light her husband's pipe any better or 
bring his slippers any quicker? Educate 
a wo 
cow,' 



20 HO W MISSIONS PA Y 

Now, contrast the city fifty years ago 
with the city to-day. Then it had a popu- 
lation of 8,000, to-day the population is 
80,000. Then there was not a school, hardly 
a book, not a printing press, carriage road, 
glass window, nor a set of European furn- 
iture, to be seen anywhere. To-day it has 
the Syrian Protestant College on the west, 
a second Protestant church on the east, 
macadamized roads, stage coaches, water 
supply from a neighboring river, new 
Oriental houses with modern conven- 
iences, furniture and books in almost every 
home. It has four colleges, five female 
seminaries and ninety-three schools. 

A similar work has been accomplished 
by Robert College in Constantinople. It 
was erected under the direction of Cyrus 
Hamlin, at a cost of $300,000. It is lo- 
cated in one of the most important cen- 
ters of influence in the Old World. Its 
teaching is based on the Bible and on the 
perfect freedom of the conscience. It has 

Beside the its graduates in the army, on 

Bosporus. t h e c j v }l Jj st> m sc hools, in 

business, in the professions, in banks and 
on newspapers, showing they occupy posi- 
tions of influence throughout the country. 



SCHOOLMASTER ABROAD 21 

Besides these, what shall we say of the 

Doshisha, established in Japan through 

the influence of mission money, which has 

in Many had such happy effect upon 

Lands Afar. t J ie men wno are fog^ [ n 

the service of that young giant among 
the nations of the east ; or of the Girls' 
Seminary in Ceylon, where Eliza Agnew 
spent forty-three years training Cey- 
lonese girls and became known as "the 
mother of a thousand daughters," not one 
of whom went through the entire course 
of study without becoming a Christian ; or 
of the work begun by Alexander Duff in 
India, where it was said that a cow had 
higher rank and more rights than a 
woman, but where to-day one hundred 
thousand women and girls are under in- 
struction ; or of the splendid work done 
in Persia by Fidelia Fiske, who for six- 
teen years labored among the degraded 
women in the "land of Esther," seeking 
to reproduce the system of instruction 
which at Holyoke, Mass., made Mary 
Lyon's school for girls so famous ; or of 
the hundreds of other schools in Japan, 
in China, in India, in Africa ; of industrial 
institutions, of training schools, of hos- 



22 HO W MISSIONS PA Y 

pitals and dispensaries where boys and 
girls, men and women are taught to read 
and w r rite, to work, to care for their bodies 
and to appreciate the environments of a 
civilized life? Of the ten thousand mis- 
sionaries on the foreign field to-day every 
one is an educator, and there are a million 
pupils under instruction. Is it nothing to 
stimulate the mind of a boy? Is it noth- 
ing to give a man the power of thought, 
to open for him a new world of mental 
activity and send his soul on reaches 
toward the infinite ? Let him answer who 
in ignorance and stupidity says that mis- 
sions do not pay. 



IV. 

SCIENTISTS AND PIONEERS. 



"Where wast thou when I laid the foundations 

of the earth? . . . 
Who laid the corner stone thereof; 
When the morning stars sang together, 
And all the sons of God shouted for joy." 



OME of the most important 
modern discoveries in the field 
of science have been made by 
missionaries. There is a good 
deal of talk about philology, or the com- 
parative study of languages, in these days. 
It has been called "the search-light of the 
sciences." It is well to remember that 
this science was born in the hut of a mis- 
sionary. 

William Carey, the pioneer of modern 
missions, was not only a student of the 
Bible and of nature ; he was also a stu- 
dent of languages. He prepared numer- 
ous philological works, dictionaries and 
grammars, and became a world-wide au- 
23 



24 HO W MISSIONS PA Y 

thority in Oriental languages. Not only 
by Mr. Carey have such services been 
rendered, but the work of scores of mis- 
sionaries in India', Africa and other coun- 
tries has been turned toward the advance- 
ment of scientific research. Zoology, bot- 
any have been enriched by the work 
of missionaries, while commerce and civ- 
ilization have been so notoriously guided 
in their extension by the information re- 
ceived from the emissaries of the Cross 
that the pages of history are blank to the 
man who scoffs at their work. Moffat 
Beside All and Livingstone in Africa, 

Waters. Morrison in China, Judson 

in Burmah, Titus Coan in the Hawaiian 
islands, have all made valuable contribu- 
tions to science. It was Titus Coan who 
first gave us a knowledge of the animals 
of Patagonia. It was O. H. Gulick who 
first studied the volcanoes of the Sand- 
wich Islands. It was Samuel Parker who 
first observed for us the hairy seal, the 
salmon, the rock cod, and other land and 
water animals of our own country west 
of the Rocky Mountains. It was a mis- 
sionary who first exhumed the buried 
mysteries of Babylon and flung a new in- 



SCIENTISTS AND PIONEERS 25 

terest over the book of Daniel. It was 
a missionary who rolled back the tide of 
twenty-two hundred years and reproduced 
the times and the trials of the Greek war- 
riors. It was a missionary who first dis- 
covered the quarries from which came 
the blocks for Nimrod's palace. It was 
a missionary. who found out how Baalbec 
was built and how the Pyramids arose 
from the desert sands. It was a mission- 
ary who rebuilt on paper the reservoirs 
of Carthage, retunneled the subterranean 
magazines of Tripoli and thus reflected a 
new light upon the aqueducts of Rome. It 
was a missionary who gave us the first 
reliable map of China. It was a mission- 
ary who wrote the best book in any lan- 
guage on Palestine and thus flung the 
spell of a new enchantment over the study 
of Bible lands. Those were missionaries 
who introduced the reading public into 
the frozen regions of Greenland; who 
opened to the world the doors of For- 
mosa, Corea, New Zealand, Raratonga, 
Tierra del Fuego; who discovered the 
Hittite inscriptions, the Stele of Mesha, 
and the Nestorian monument. Their work 
is acknowledged by all the leading scien- 



26 HO W MISSIONS PA Y 

tific societies in the world, among them 
the American Oriental Society, the Royal 
Asiatic Society, the International Ex- 
ploration Society and the Oriental Topo- 
graphical Corps. Missionaries have care- 
fully collected and faithfully transmitted 
to these societies knowledge which it 
would have cost millions of dollars to se- 
cure in any other way. They have not 
gone forth as professional scientists, but 
being keenly alive to the beauties and 
wonders of nature they have discovered 
facts and witnessed phenomena never be- 
fore revealed to enlightened hearts and 
minds. 

The contribution which David Living- 
stone, alone, made to geography is mar- 
velous. He traveled twenty-nine thou- 
sand miles in Africa and added to the 
known world about one million square 
miles. He discovered the five lakes of 
central Africa and made known the won- 
derful Victoria Falls. He was the first 
He Made European to travel the en- 

New Maps. f-} re length of Lake Tangan- 
yika and to give the world its true ori- 
entation. He remade the map of Africa 
and swung the Mountains of the Moon 



SCIENTISTS AND PIONEERS 27 

across the country the other way. His 
discoveries were never mere happy 
guesses or vague descriptions from the 
accounts of the natives. Each spot was 
determined with the utmost precision, 
though at the time his head might be 
giddy from pain and his body burned with 
fever. 

Dr. W. M. Thomson, in his "The Land 
and the Book," shows himself to be with- 
out a peer in the variety of his contri- 
butions to the geography of Syria and 
Palestine. The Bibliotheca Sacra says of 
his work : "If the Syrian Mission had 
produced no other fruit, the churches 
which have supported it would have re- 
The "Fifth ceived ample return for 

Gospel" Read. a u_ t ^ y j iave ex pended. 

It is an interesting description of the 
mountains and valleys, cities and rivers of 
Bible lands. It makes real the stories of 
the Jordan, of Canaan, of Sinai, of Egypt 
and of Sodom, by adding to our knowl- 
edge of the topography and geography of 
the Holy Land." 

What is more picturesque than Marcus 
Whitman as he stands, dressed in his 
buffalo robe, fresh from the Rocky Moun- 



28 HO W MISSIONS PA Y 

tains, in the presence of Daniel Webster, 
pleading for that marvelously productive 
country on the Pacific slope — Washing- 
ton and Oregon? Mr. Whitman and Rev. 
Henry Spalding, with their wives, were 
the first white people that ever crossed 
the Rocky Mountains. There these mis- 
sionaries discovered a well-planned 
scheme to secure this valuable region for 
Great Britain, not only by emigration, 
but also by creating the impression that 
wagons could not possibly cross the 
mountains from the east to the Columbia 
river. It was in the autumn of 1842 that 
these missionaries were sitting at a table 
He saved the at Fort Walla Walla when a 
West. messenger announced that 
some British emigrants had arrived. 
Toasts were drunk, and one of the guests 
said, "Now let the Americans whistle. 
The country is ours." Dr. Whitman ex- 
cused himself from the company, and, 
after some hurried preparation, donned 
his buffalo robe and started to cross the 
continent in midwinter, risking cold, star- 
vation and hostile Indians to save Oregon 
for this country. He reached Washing- 
ton in the spring, frostbitten and ex- 



SCIENTISTS AND PIONEERS 29 

hausted, He called upon Daniel Web- 
ster 1 , Secretary of State, and told his 
story. The secretary treated him with 
perfect indifference and informed him that 
he was about to exchange that worthless 
territory for some valuable cod-fishery 
concessions in Newfoundland. The in- 
defatigable missionary then turned to 
President Tyler and told the same story. 
The President said, "Mr. Whitman, since 
you are a missionary I will believe you, 
and if you will take your emigrants over 
the mountains, the trade shall not be con- 
summated." A few months later Mr. 
Whitman started with one thousand emi- 
grants, whom he led safely, after months 
of travel and toil, pain and hardship, over 
Whitman pass into the Willamette Val- 
ley, and that magnificent stretch of terri- 
tory comprising Washington and Oregon 
was saved to our republic by the patriotic 
energy and enterprise of a missionary. 



V. 
DOLLARS AND CENTS. 



"What is the Almighty, that we should serve 

him? 
And what profit should we have, if we pray 

unto him?" 

I — ^ WERY business man should be in- 
I y { I terested in missions because of 

raSSjl their relation to commerce. One 
IPmP I cannot do business without capi- 
tal, capital cannot be obtained without se- 
curity, and security cannot be given in an 
uncivilized, unsettled state of society. The 
commercial value of missions is abun- 
dantly illustrated by their effect upon the 
Sandwich Islands. The history of these 
islands shows that fifty years ago they 
had no commercial standing whatever. 
Protestant work was begun in 1819, and 
Your Money a million dollars was used 

Back. [ n evangelizing the peo- 

ple. To-day they are a part of the United 
States and have an annual trade with a 
30 



DOLLARS AND CENTS 31 

net profit of twice the cost of their evan- 
gelization. Before Christianity trans- 
formed the Fijians, the commerce of their 
islands was nothing. To-day their trade 
amounts annually to over a million dol- 
lars. Samoa was positively shunned 
thirty years ago by the nations of the 
world. To-day the people are nominally 
Christian and the commerce of the islands 
is sufficient to tempt Germany, United 
States and Great Britain to seek its con- 
trol by intrigue. For every dollar spent 
in mission work the commercial world re- 
ceives forty in return. Before Christian- 
ity made any progress among the Dakota 
Indians it required $120 a head to support 
them. After missionaries went among 
them and began to exemplify the practi- 
cal workings of the Christian religion it 
cost the government only $7.20 a head to 
support them. 

Bishop Fowler says he saw a Digger 
Indian get his breakfast one morning in 
the Yosemite Valley, under the inspiring 
influences of that sublime scenery, out of 
an ant's nest, with a sharp stick for a 
fork. His breakfast cost him nothing, and 
his dry goods bill for a whole year would 



32 HO W MISSIONS PA Y 

not exceed ten cents. What sale could 
we get for our surplus products among 
such consumers? Suppose we had a sur- 
plus of ready-made clothing. Could we 

Christianize— ship Such products to the 

civilize. savages ? Not at all. Be- 

fore we send tailors and milliners we 
must send the missionary. You cannot 
civilize a man by compelling him to wear 
civilized clothing. You cannot civilize by 
beginning on the outside. You must be- 
gin by planting the civilizing force on the 
inside. Whenever the grace of God 
touches the heart the whole man wakes 
up. Every instinct of progress is stirred 
and a new being is born. The first want 
created in the savage heart when he be- 
comes a Christian is for clothing with 
which to cover his nakedness. When he 
gets a shirt and a pair of duck pants on 
he can no longer squat on the ground, but 
seated on a three-legged stool he feels 
raised a thousand miles above his former 
self. Presently his wife wants a bonnet, 
a pair of shoes, a dress, some gloves and 
ribbons. Then the children want pictures 
and books. They will work and trade; 



DOLLARS AND CENTS 33 

you can buy and sell ; and that means 
commerce. 

The people of Oriental lands are en- 
tirely satisfied with the customs of their 
ancestors. When left to themselves they 
aspire to nothing better. No contact with 
western civilization has ever roused them 
from their apathy. It is only when the 
mind and heart are warmed into life by 
the gospel truth that they awake and be- 
gin to want something new. It has been 
said that if trade relations could be es- 
tablished with barbarous and semi-bar- 
barous nations so as to introduce them to 
civilized life it would civilize and enrich 
them. This was tried about twenty-five 
years ago among the Zulus of Africa. 
Plows and wagons and oxen were shipped 
to them with a view of civilizing them. 
The result was that the Christian Zulus 
adopted the new method of cultivating 
the soil and made great progress in the 
art of agriculture. But the heathen Zulus 
harnessed their women to the plows and 
while their wives were plowing the soil 
they sat down and ate up the oxen. Peo- 
ple appreciate the conveniences of mod- 
ern civilization only when the heart and 
LifC. 



34 HO W MISSIONS PA Y 

life have been touched by Christianity. 
The great civilizing influence goes on be- 
fore, embodied in the missionary ; after 
him comes commerce in the form of plows 
and harrows, picks and shovels, wagons 
and harness, clocks and carpets, knives 
and forks, dishes, axes, books, maps, pic- 
tures, windows, chairs, telephones, bicy- 
cles, railroads, and ten thousand other 
things which go to make up civilized life. 
The commercial value of any nation is 
determined by the degree of Christian 
civilization it enjoys. The annual busi- 
ness of England is $100 for every person 
in the kingdom ; of the United States, 
$75; of France, $50; of Japan, $15; of 
China, $4; of Africa, $2.50. When we 
shall have Christianized China and Africa, 
with all the islands of the sea, what new 
markets will have been opened and what 
millions will have been added to the com- 
merce of the world ! 






VI. 

THE FUTURE THAT SHALL BE. 



"This is the end of the matter; all hath been 
heard: fear God, and keep his commandments; 
for this is the whole duty of man." 



THESE triumphs which have been 
achieved through missionary ac- 
tivities lead one very naturally 
to remark upon the wide sweep 
which the Church takes in its evangelis- 
tic efforts. There is nothing narrow in 
the conception which it has of the work 
to be done. It touches every department 
of life. By its influence the springs of 
human activity are affected in every di- 
rection. The conception the world has 
had of the Church and its relation to hu- 
manity has always been narrow. A 
casual glance at the New Testament 
shows that in the mind of Christ the king- 
aii Kingdoms dom of which he speaks 

Christ's. is the j ifej and the Church 

is the manifestation of that life to the 

world. "In him was life; and the life was 

35 



36 HO W MISSIONS PA Y 

the light of men." He was "the true 
Light, which lighteth every man that 
cometh into the world." Is there any- 
thing narrow about that? Anything 
contracted or small? It is as wide as 
human heart-beats and touches every- 
thing that touches the interest of man- 
kind. "The kingdoms of this world" shall 
"become the kingdoms of our Lord and 
of his Christ." Not the temporal and 
earthly kingdoms only; not those alone 
of England and of India, but the king- 
doms of science and commerce, of edu- 
cation and wealth, of agriculture and in- 
dustry, of politics and music. Kingdoms 
in which you and I may become kings 
and queens and potentates. Had the 
Church grasped that idea a thousand years 
ago, says Dr. Strong, her history would 
have been differently written, her victo- 
ries more complete, her triumphs more 
marked. And yet I have not one pulse of 
sympathy for those who cry out against 
the successes achieved or depreciate the 
measures employed. If the Church has 
not saved the world, she has at least kept 
it from rotting. If she has not been its full 
salvation, she has been the salt whose 



FUTURE THAT SHALL BE 37 

saving power has been vast and precious. 
And when we remember how small a part 
of her possible force she has been able to 
use and in how narrow a sphere her in- 
a Great fluence has been exerted, how 
Harvest. s h e j ias b een hindered and 

crippled by our mistaken notions, there 
is kindled within us a hope that when she 
rises *to the true conception of her mis- 
sion, availing herself of the forces at her 
command, she will mightily hasten the 
day of Christ's enthronement over all the 
world. 

Missions do pay. They are grandly 
triumphant. They are heaven-ordained, 
and through them the world will ulti- 
mately be brought to the feet of our Lord 
Jesus Christ. A great opportunity is be- 
fore ns. The instrumentality is within 
our hands. The command has already 
been given. Who is there to answer nay? 



JAN 12 1903 



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